Obit: Rosalind ‘Roz’ Wyman played key role in bringing Dodgers to LA

Rosalind “Roz” Wiener Wyman,  the youngest person ever elected to the Los Angeles City Council and who played a key in bringing the Dodgers to Los Angeles, has died. She was 92.

Wyman, a lifelong Democrat, was a political force in California politics. She put together fund-raisers for candidates, organized major events and was a scrappy campaigner herself and had an inexhaustible supply of energy.

“Roz was a real force of nature whenever she set her mind to something,” Sen. Dianne Feinstein said in a written statement. “Whether it was politics or dragging a baseball team 3,000 miles across the country, Roz had a passion that was infectious and she really got things done.”

Wyman died at her Los Angeles home, her family said in a statement to the Los Angeles Times.

(Editor’s Note: Wyman, as part of Capitol Weekly’s oral history series, was interviewed extensively by L.A. Times columnist Patt Morrison in February 2019. Click here, here and here to see the three-part presentation.)

In 1953, at age 22, Wyman was elected to the Los Angeles City Council. Within days, she introduced a resolution to bring the Dodgers to L.A. from their home in Brooklyn, New York. In 1958, following intense negotiations with Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley, the Dodgers were in L.A. At the last minute before agreeing to the move, O’Malley said he needed a team close by to play to encourage fan attendance, and Wyman set to work to get the Giants from New York to San Francisco. The Giants, too, headed West.

Wyman also pushed to move the Lakers from Minneapolis.

Wyman has been a Dodgers season ticket holder since Dodger Stadium opened on April 10, 1962. When O’Malley died in 1979, his son and former Dodgers owner Peter O’Malley presented Wyman with a “master key” to Dodger Stadium, according to Dodger Blue, a publication that follows the team.

Earlier this month, on Wyman’s 92nd birthday, the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors voted to name the fountain overlook in Grand Park the “Roz Wyman Court.” It also agreed to install a plaque at the Music Center to honor her.

“If you bleed Dodger blue, you can credit that love to Roz as she helped bring the Dodgers to Los Angeles,” Supervisor Hilda Solis said in a statement after the board’s Oct. 4 vote. “She was also behind the idea of connecting Los Angeles City Hall up to Grand Avenue through a park where all Angelenos could gather. That idea took 60 years to become a reality, but that is why Roz is a visionary whose dreams changed both this city and county.”

Wyman is survived by her three children, Betty Lynn, Robert and Brad; and three grandchildren, Samantha, Eugene and Oliver.